The Antitrust Week In Review
Here are some of the developments in antitrust news this past week that we found interesting and are following.
. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, downloaded a popular new app, Phhhoto, on Aug. 8, 2014, and took a selfie. Other Facebook executives and product managers soon followed suit. The social network then made overtures to integrate Phhhoto. But the interest of Facebook’s top executives in Phhhoto was just a show, according to a lawsuit filed on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York by the start-up, which is now defunct. Instead, Facebook simply wanted to squash the competition, according to the suit, which accused the company of antitrust violations.
. Two U.S. senators have introduced bipartisan legislation that seeks to make it harder for tech giants to make acquisitions. The office of Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel, introduced a bill that would make it easier for the government to stop deals it believes break antitrust law by requiring the companies to prove to a judge that the deals are good for competition, and therefore legal. A similar bill, introduced by Democratic Representative Hakeem Jeffries and others, has been approved in the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee and awaits a vote by the full House. Traditionally it is up to the government in antitrust enforcement to show a particular transaction would cause prices to rise or is illegal for other reasons.
. The Biden administration is suing to stop Penguin Random House, the largest publisher in the United States, from acquiring its rival Simon & Schuster, as part of a new drive in Washington against corporate consolidation. In a publishing landscape dominated by a handful of mega corporations, Penguin Random House towers over the others. It operates more than 300 imprints worldwide and has 15,000 new releases a year, far more than the other four major U.S. publishers. With its $2.18 billion proposed acquisition of Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House stood to become substantially larger.
Edited by Gary J. Malone
Tagged in: Antitrust Enforcement, Antitrust Litigation,